THE 



WORKING OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE FKATEENITY $ B K 

OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
June 28, 1888. 

By CHARLES W. ELIOT. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

SSniijerstts ?&ttss, 
1888. 



THE 



WORKING OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE FRATEENITY $ B K 

OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
June 28, 1888. 

By CHARLES W. ELIOT. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1888. 



.E4 



WJrW YORK PUBL. unK 



THE WORKING 



OF THE 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 



I PURPOSE to examine some parts of the experience of 
the American Democracy, with the intention of suggesting 
the answers to certain theoretical objections which have 
been urged against democracy in general, and of showing in 
part what makes the strength of the democratic form of 
government. 

For more than a hundred years there has been among 
civilized nations a decided set of opinion towards democratic 
institutions ; but in Europe this set has been determined 
rather by unfavorable experience of despotic and oligarchic 
forms of government, than by any favorable experience of 
the democratic form. Government by one, and government 
by a few have been tried through many centuries, by dif- 
ferent races of men, and under all sorts of conditions ; but 
neither has ever succeeded, — not even in England, — in pro- 
ducing a reasonably peaceful, secure, and also happy society. 
No lesson upon this subject could be more forcible than 
that which modern Europe teaches. Empires and mon- 
archies, like patriarchies and chieftainships, have doubtless 
served their turn ; but they have signally failed to realize 
the social ideals — some ancient and some modern in origin 
— which have taken firm hold of men's minds since the Amer- 
ican Revolution. This failure extends through all society, 
from top to bottom. It^i^s- as conspicuous in the moral con- 
dition of the upper classes as in the material condition of 



the lower. Oligarchies call themselves aristocracies ; but 
government by the few has never really been government 
by the best. Therefore mankind tends to seek the realiza- 
tion of its ideals in broad-based forms of government. 

It can hardly be said that Europe has any experience of 
democracy which is applicable to a modern State. Gallant lit- 
tle Switzerland lives in a mountain fastness, and exists by the 
sufferance of powerful neighbors, each jealous of the other. 
No lessons for modern use can be drawn from the transient 
city democracies of ancient or mediseval times. The city as 
a unit of government-organization has gone forever, with the 
glories of Athens, Rome, and Florence. Throughout this 
century a beneficent tendency has been manifested towards 
the formation of great national units. Witness the expansion 
of Russia and the United States, the creation of the German 
empire, the union of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, and the 
unification of Italy. At least within these great units prevail 
a common peace and an unrestricted trade. The blessings 
which result from holding vast territories and multitudes un- 
der one national government are so great that none but large 
governments have any future before them. To succeed, 
democracy must show itself able to control both territory 
and population on a continental scale. Therefore its methods 
must be representative, — which means that they are neces- 
sarily deliberative, and are likely to be conservative and slow. 
Of such government by the many Europe has no trustworthy 
experience, either in ancient or in modern times. The so- 
called democracies of Greece and Rome were really govern- 
ments by a small caste of free citizens ruling a multitude of 
aliens and slaves : hasty and tyrannical themselves, they 
naturally prepared the way for tyrants. Yet when all the 
world were slaves, that caste of free citizens was a wonder- 
ful invention, France, since the Revolution, has exhibited 
some fugitive specimens of democratic rule, but has had no 
stable government of any sort, whether tyranny, oligarchy, or 
democracy. In short, such experience as Europe has had 
of so-called democracies — with the exception of admirable 



Switzerland — is worse than useless ; for it is thoroughly 
misleading, and has misled many acute observers of political 
plienomena. 

In this absence of available European experience, where 
can mankind look for trustworthy evidence concerning the 
practical working of democratic institutions ? Solely to the 
United States. The Australasian colonies will before long 
contribute valuable evidence ; but at present their population 
is small, and their experience is too recent to be of great 
value to students of comparative politics. Yet it is upon ex- 
perience, and experience alone, that safe conclusions can be 
based concerning the merits and the faults of democracy. On 
politics, speculative writing — even by able men like Sir George 
Cornewall Lewis and Sir Henry Maine — is as perilous as it is 
on biology ; and prophecy is still more dangerous. To the 
modern mind, ideal States lilve Plato's Republic, Sir Thomas 
More's Utopia, and Saint Augustine's Civitas Dei, are utterly 
uninteresting, — particularly when they rest upon such vision- 
ary postulates as community of goods and community of wives 
and children. The stable State must have its roots in use and 
wont, in familiar customs and laws, and in the inherited hab- 
its of successive generations. But it is only in the United 
States that a well-rooted democracy upon a great scale has 
ever existed ; and hence the importance of accurate obser- 
vation and just judgment of the working of American demo- 
cratic institutions, both political and social. Upon the success 
of those institutions rest the best hopes of the world. 

In discussing some parts of our national experience I intend 
to confine myself to moral and intellectual phenomena, and 
shall have little to say about the material prosperity of the 
country. The rapid growth of the United States in popu- 
lation, wealth, and everything which constitutes material 
strength is, indeed, marvellous ; but this concomitant of the 
existence of democratic institutions in a fertile land, rich also 
in minerals, ores, oil, and gas, has often been dilated upon, and 
may be dismissed with only two remarks : first, that a great 



6 

deal of moral vigor has been put into the material develop- 
ment of tlie United States ; and secondly, that wide-spread 
comfort ought to promote rather than to hinder the civilizing 
of a people. Sensible and righteous government ought ulti- 
mately to make a nation rich ; and although this proposition 
cannot be directly reversed, yet diffused well-being, comfort, 
and material prosperity establish a fair presumption in favor 
of the government and the prevailing social conditions under 
which these blessings have been secured. 

The first question I wish to deal with is a fundamental one : 
How wisely, and by what process, has the American people 
made up its mind upon public questions of supreme difficulty 
and importance ? Not how will it, or how might it, make up 
its mind ; but how has it made up its mind ? It is commonly 
said that the multitude, being ignorant and untrained, cannot 
reach so wise a conclusion upon questions of state as the cul- 
tivated few ; that the wisdom of a mass of men can only be 
an average wisdom at the best ; and that democracy, which 
in things material levels up, in things intellectual and moral 
levels down. Even De Tocqueville says that there is a mid- 
dling standard of knowledge in a democracy, to which some 
rise and others descend. Let us put these speculative opin- 
ions, which have so plausible a sound, in contrast with 
American facts. 

The people of this country have had three supreme ques- 
tions to settle within the last hundred and thirty years : 
first, the question of independence of Great Britain ; secondly, 
the question of forming a firm federal union ; and thirdly, the 
question of maintaining that union at whatever cost of blood 
and treasure. In the decision of these questions, four genera- 
tions of men took active part. The first two questions were 
settled by a population mainly English ; but when the third 
was decided, the foreign admixture was already considerable. 
That graver or more far-reaching political problems could 
be presented to any people, it is impossible to imagine. 
Everybody can now see that in each case the only wise de- 
cision was arrived at by the multitude, in spite of difficulties 



and dangers which many contemporary statesmen and pub- 
licists of our own and other hinds thought insuperable. It 
is quite the fashion to laud to the skies the second of these 
three great achievements of the American democracy ; but the 
creation of the Federal Union, regarded as a wise determina- 
tion of a multitude of voters, was certainly not more remarka- 
ble than the other two. No government — tyranny or oligarchy, 
despotic or constitutional — could possibly have made wiser 
decisions or executed them more resolutely, as the event has 
proved in each of the three cases mentioned. 

So much for the wisdom of these great resolves. Now, by 
what process were they arrived at ? 

In each case the process was slow, covering many years 
during which discussion and debate went on in pulpits, legis- 
latures, public meetings, newspapers, and books. The best 
minds of the country took part in these prolonged debates. 
Party passions were aroused ; advocates on each side disputed 
before the people ; the authority of recognized political lead- 
ers was invoked ; public spirit and selfish interest were ap- 
pealed to ; and that vague but powerful sentiment called 
love of country, felt equally by high and low, stirred men's 
hearts and lit the intellectual combat with lofty emotion. 
In presence of such a protracted discussion, a multitude of 
interested men make up their minds just as one interested 
man does. They listen, compare what they hear with their 
own experience, consider the bearings of the question on their 
own interests, and consult their self-respect, their hopes, and 
their fears. Not one in a thousand of them could originate, 
or even state with precision, the arguments he hears ; not one 
in a thousand could give a clear account of his own observa- 
tions, processes of thought, and motives of action upon the 
subject, — but the collective judgment is informed and guided 
by the keener wits and stronger wills, and the collective wis- 
dom is higher and surer in guiding public conduct than that 
of one mind or of several superior minds uninstructed by 
million-eyed observation and million-tongued debate. 

In all three of the great popular decisions under considera- 



8 

tion, most remarkable discernment, patience, and resolution 
were, as a fact, displayed. If these were the average qualities 
of the many, then the average mental and moral powers of the 
multitude suffice for greatest deeds ; if they were the qualities 
of the superior few infused into the many by speech and press, 
by exhortation, example, and leadership, even then the asser- 
tion that the operative opinions of the unlearned mass on 
questions of state must necessarily be foolish, their honesty 
only an ordinary honesty, and their sentiments vulgar, falls to 
the ground. The multitude, it would seem, either can distil 
essential wisdom from a seething mass of heterogeneous evi- 
dence and opinion, or can be inspired, like a single individual, 
from without and above itself. If the practical wisdom of the 
multitude in action be attributed to the management or to 
the influence of a sagacious few, the wise result proves that 
these leaders were well chosen by some process of natural 
selection, instead of being designated, as in an oligarchy, by 
the inheritance of artificial privileges. 

It is fair to say that one reason why democratic decisions 
of great public questions are apt to turn out well, and there- 
fore to seem to posterity to have been wise, is, that the state 
of the public mind and will is an all-important factor in deter- 
mining the issue of such questions. Democracy vigorously 
executing its own purpose demonstrates by the issue its wis- 
dom before the event. Indeed, this is one of the most legiti- 
mate and important advantages of the democratic form of 
government. 

There is a limited sense in which it is true that in the 
United States the average man predominates ; but the politi- 
cal ideas which have predominated in the United States, and 
therefore in the mind and will of the average man, — equality 
before the law, national independence, federation, and indis- 
soluble union, — are ideas not of average, but of superlative 
merit. It is also true that the common school and the news- 
paper echo received opinion, and harp on moral common- 
places. But unfortunately there are many accepted humane 
opinions and ethical commonplaces which have never yet 



been embodied in national legislation, — much less in inter- 
national law, — and which may therefore still be repeated 
to some advantage. If that comprehensive commonplace, 
" Ye are all members one of another," could be realized in 
international relations, there would be an end of war and 
industrial isolation. 

Experience has shown that democracy must not be ex- 
pected to decide wisely about things in which it feels no 
immediate concern. Unless its interests are affected or its 
sentiments touched, it will not take the pains necessary 
to arrive at just conclusions. To engage public attention 
sufficiently to procure legislation, is the reformer's chief diffi- 
culty in a democracy. Questions of war, peace, or human 
rights, and questions which concern the national unity, dig- 
nity, or honor, win the attention of the many. Indeed, the 
greatest political questions are precisely those in which the 
many have concern ; for they suffer the penalties of discord, 
war, and public wrong-doing. But it is curiously difficult to 
secure from multitudes of voters effective dealing with ques- 
tions which relate merely to taxation, expenditure, adminis- 
tration, trade, or manufactures. On these lesser matters the 
multitude will not declare itself until evils multiply intoler- 
ably. We need not be surprised, however, that the intelligence 
and judgment of the multitude can be brought into play only 
when they think their own interests are to be touched. All 
experience, both ancient and modern, shows that when the 
few rule they do not attend to the interests of the many. 

I shall next consider certain forms of mental and moral ac- 
tivity which the American democracy demands of hundreds 
of thousands of the best citizens, but which are without 
parallel in despotic and oligarchic States. I refer to the 
widely diffused and ceaseless activity which maintains, first, 
the immense Federal Union with all its various sub-divisions 
into States, counties, and towns; secondly, the voluntary 
system in religion; and thirdly, the voluntary system in 
the higher instruction. 



10 

To have carried into successful practice on a great scale the 
federative principle, which binds many semi-independent States 
into one Nation, is a good work done for all peoples. Federa- 
tion promises to counteract the ferocious quarrelsomeness of 
mankind, and to abolish the jealousy of trade ; but its price 
in mental labor and moral initiative is high. It is a system 
which demands not only vital force at the heart of the State, 
but a diffused vitality in every part. In a despotic govern- 
ment the intellectual and moral force of the whole organism 
radiates from the central seat of power ; in a federal union 
political vitality must be diffused throughout the whole organ- 
ism, as animal heat is developed and maintained in every 
molecule of the entire body. The success of the United States 
as a federal union has been and is effected by the watchful- 
ness, industry, and public spirit of millions of men who spend 
in that noble cause the greater part of their leisure, and of 
the mental force which can be spared from bread-winning 
occupations. The costly expenditure goes on without ceas- 
ing all over the country, wherever citizens come together to 
attend to the affairs of the village, town, county, or State. 
This is the price of liberty and union. The well-known 
promptness and skill of Americans in organizing a new com- 
munity result from the fact that hundreds of thousands of 
Americans — and their fathers before them — have had prac- 
tice in managing public affairs. To get this practice costs 
time, labor, and vitality, which in a despotic or oligarchic 
State are seldom spent in this direction. 

The successful establishment and support of religious in- 
stitutions, — churches, seminaries, and religious charities, — 
upon a purely voluntary system, is another unprecedented 
achievement of the American democracy. In only three gen- 
erations American democratic society has effected the com- 
plete separation of Church and State, a reform which no 
other people has ever attempted. Yet religious institutions 
are not stinted in the United States ; on the contrary, they 
abound and thrive, and all alike are protected and encour 
aged, but not supported, by the State. Who has taken up 



11 

the work which the State has reUnqnished ? Somebody has 
had to do it, for the work is done. Who provides the money 
to build churches, pay salaries, conduct missions, and educate 
ministers ? Who supplies the brains for organizing and 
maintaining these various activities ? This is the work, not 
of a few officials, but of millions of intelligent and devoted 
men and women scattered through all the villages and cities 
of the broad land. The maintenance of churches, semina- 
ries, and charities by voluntary contributions and by the ad- 
ministrative labors of volunteers, implies an enormous and 
incessant expenditure of mental and moral force. It is a 
force which must ever be renewed from generation to gen- 
eration ; for it is a personal force, constantly expiring, and as 
constantly to be replaced. Into the maintenance of the vol- 
untary system in religion has gone a good part of the moral 
energy which three generations have been able to spare from 
the work of getting a living ; but it is worth the sacrifice, and 
will be accounted in history one of the most remarkable feats 
of American public spirit and faith in freedom. 

A similar exhibition of diffused mental and moral energy 
has accompanied the establishment and the development of 
a system of higher instruction in the United States, with 
no inheritance of monastic endowments, and no gifts from 
royal or ecclesiastical personages disposing of great resources 
derived from the State, and with but scanty help from the 
public purse. Whoever is familiar with the colleges and 
universities of the United States knows that the creation of 
these democratic institutions has cost the life-work of thou- 
sands of devoted men. At the sacrifice of other aspirations, 
and under heavy discouragements and disappointments, but 
with faith and hope, these teachers and trustees have built 
up institutions, which, however imperfect, have cherished 
scientific enthusiasm, fostered piety, literature, and art, main- 
tained the standards of honor and public duty, and steadily 
kept in view the ethical ideals which democracy cherishes. 
It has been a popular work, to which large numbers of 
people in successive generations have contributed of their 



12 

substance or of their labor. The endowment of institu- 
tions of education, including libraries and museums, by 
private persons in the United States is a phenomenon 
without precedent or parallel, and is a legitimate effect of 
democratic institutions. Under a tyranny — were it that of 
a Marcus Aurelius — or an oligarchy — were it as enlightened 
as that which now rules Germany — such a phenomenon 
would be simply impossible. The University of Strasburg 
was lately established by an imperial decree, and is chiefly 
maintained out of the revenue of the State. Harvard Uni- 
versity has been two hundred and fifty years in growing to its 
present stature, and is even now inferior at many points to 
the new University of Strasburg ; but Harvard is the crea- 
tion of thousands of persons, living and dead, rich and poor, 
learned and simple, who have voluntarily given it their time, 
thought, or money, and lavished upon it their affection; Stras- 
burg exists by the mandate of the ruling few directing upon 
it a part of the product of ordinary taxation. Like the volun- 
tary system in religion, the voluntary system in the higher 
education buttresses democracy ; each demands from the 
community a large outlay of intellectual activity and moral 
vigor. 

There is another direction in which the people of the United 
States have spent and are now spending a vast amount of in- 
tellectual and moral energy, — a direction not, as in the three 
cases just considered, absolutely peculiar to the American re- 
public, but still highly characteristic of democracy. I mean 
the service of corporations. Within the last hundred years the 
American people have invented a new and large application of ^ 
the ancient principle of incorporation. We are so accustomed 
to corporations as indispensable agents in carrying on great 
public works and services, and great industrial or financial 
operations, that we forget the very recent development of the 
corporation with limited liability as a common business agent. 
Prior to 1789 there were only two corporations for business 
purposes in Massachusetts. The English general statute 



13 

which provides for incorporation with limited liability dates 
only from 1855. No other nation has made such general or 
such successful use of corporate powers as the American, — 
and for the reason that the method is essentially a democratic 
method, suitable for a country in which great individual or 
family properties are rare, and small properties are numerous. 
Freedom of incorporation makes possible great combinations 
of small capitals, and while winning the advantages of con- 
centrated management, permits diffused ownership. These 
merits have been quickly understood and turned to account 
by the American democracy. The service of many corpora- 
tions has become even more important than the service of 
the several States of the Union. The managers of great 
companies have trusts reposed in them which are matched 
only in the highest executive offices of the nation ; and they 
are relatively free from the numerous checks and restrictions 
under which the highest national officials must always act. 
The activity of corporations, great and small, penetrates every 
part of the industrial and social body, and their daily main- 
tenance brings into play more mental and moral force than 
the maintenance of all the governments on the continent 
combined. 

These propositions can easily be illustrated by actual exam- 
ples. I find established at Boston, for instance, the head- 
quarters of a railroad corporation which employs eighteen 
thousand persons, has gross receipts of about $40,000,000 a 
year, and on occasion pays its best-paid officer a salary of 
'135,000. I find there also the central office of a manufac- 
turing establishment which employs more than six thousand 
persons, has a gross annual income of more than $7,000,000, 
and pays its best-paid officer $20,000 a year. The gross re- 
ceipts of the Pennsylvania railroad system are $115,000,000 
a year, the highest-paid official of the company receives a 
salary of $30,000, and the whole system employs one hundred 
thousand men. A comparison of such figures with the corre- 
sponding figures for the prosperous and respectable Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts is not uninstructive. The gross 



14 

receipts of the Commonwealth are about 17,000,000 a year, 
the highest salary it pays is |6,500, and there are not more 
than six thousand persons in its employ for any considerable 
part of the year. 

In the light of such facts it is easy to see some of the 
reasons why American corporations command the services of 
men of high capacity and character, who in other countries or 
in earlier times would have been in the service of the State. 
In American democratic society corporations supplement the 
agencies of the State, and their functions have such impor- 
tance in determining conditions of labor, diffusing comfort 
and general well-being among millions of people, and utiliz- 
ing innumerable large streams and little rills of capital, that 
the upper grades of their service are reached by merit, are 
filled as a rule upon a tenure during good behavior and effi- 
ciency, are well paid, and have great dignity and consideration. 
Of the enormous material benefits which have resulted from 
the American extension of the principle of incorporation I 
need say nothing. I wish only to point out that freedom 
of incorporation, though no longer exclusively a democratic 
agency, has given strong support to democratic institutions ; 
and that a great wealth of intellect, energy, and fidelity is 
devoted to the service of corporations by their officers and 
directors. 

The four forms of mental and moral activity which I have 
been considering, — that which maintains political vitality 
throughout the Federal Union ; that which supports unsub- 
sidized religious institutions ; that which develops the higher 
instruction in the arts and sciences, and trains men for all the 
professions ; and that which is applied to the service of cor- 
porations, — all illustrate the educating influence of democratic 
institutions, an influence which foreign observers are apt to 
overlook or underestimate. The ballot is not the only polit- 
ical institution which has educated the American democracy. 
Democracy is a training-school in which multitudes learn in 
many ways to take thought for others, to exercise public func- 
tions, and to bear public responsibilities. 



15 

So many critics of the theory of democracy have maintained 
that a democratic government would be careless of public 
obligations, and unjust towards private property, that it will 
be interesting to inquire what a century of American expe- 
rience indicates upon this important point. Has there been 
any disposition on the part of the American democracy to 
create exaggerated public debts, to throw the burden of public 
debts on posterity rather than on the present generation, or to 
favor in legislation the poorer sort as against the richer, the 
debtor as against the creditor ? 

The answer to these questions is not doubtful. With the 
exception of the sudden creation of the great national debt 
occasioned by the Civil War, the American communities have 
been very moderate in borrowing, the State debts being for 
the most part insignificant, and the city debts far below the 
English standard. Moreover, these democratic communities, 
with a few local and temporary exceptions, pay their public 
debts more promptly than any State under the rule of a despot 
or a class has ever done. The government of the United 
States has once paid the whole of its public debt, and is in a 
fair way to perform that feat again. So much for democratic 
treatment of public obligations. 

It is conceivable, however, that the popular masses should 
think it for their own interest to keep down and pay off public 
indebtedness, and yet should discriminate in legislation in 
favor of the majority who are not well off, and against the 
minority who are. There are two points, and only two points, 
so far as I know, at which permanent American legislation 
has, as a fact, intentionally discriminated in favor of the poor. 
The several States, as a rule, exempt from taxation household 
effects and personal property to a moderate amount, and the 
tools of farmers and mechanics. The same articles and a few 
others like them are also commonly exempted from attach- 
ment for debt, together often with a homestead not exceeding 
in value one thousand dollars. The exemptions from attach- 
ment, and even those from taxation, will cover all the prop- 
erty of many poor persons and families ; yet this legislation 



16 

is humane and worthy of respect, being analogous to the com- 
mon provision which exempts from all taxation persons who 
by reason of age or infirmity may, in the judgment of the 
assessors, be unable to contribute to the public charges. It 
is intended to prevent cases of hardship in the collection 
either of taxes or of debts ; and doubtless the exemptions 
from attachment are designed also to leave to the debtor a 
fair chance of recovery. 

After observing the facts of a full century, one may therefore 
say of the American democracy that it has contracted public 
debt with moderation, paid it with unexampled promptness, 
acquired as good a public credit as the world has ever known, 
made private property secure, and shown no tendency to 
attack riches or to subsidize poverty, or in either direction 
to violate the fundamental principle of democracy, that all 
men are equal before the law. The significance of these 
facts is prodigious. They mean that, as regards private 
property and its security, a government by the many, for the 
many, is more to be trusted than any other form of govern- 
ment ; and that as regards public indebtedness, an experienced 
democracy is more likely to exhibit just sentiments and prac- 
tical good judgment than an oligarchy or a tyranny. 

An argument against democracy, which evidently had great 
weight with Sir Henry Maine, because he supposed it to rest 
upon the experience of mankind, is stated as follows : Progress 
and reformation have always been the work of the few, and 
have been opposed by the many ; therefore democracies will be 
obstructive. This argument is completely refuted by the first 
century of the American democracy, alike in the field of morals 
and jurisprudence, and in the field of manufactures and trade. 
Nowhere, for instance, has the great principle of religious tol- 
eration been so thoroughly put in practice as in the United 
States ; nowhere have such well-meant and persistent efforts 
been made to improve the legal status of women ; nowhere 
has the conduct of hospitals, asylums, reformatories, and 
prisons been more carefully studied ; nowhere have legisla- 



17 

tive remedies for acknowledged abuses and evils been more 
promptly and perseveringly sought. There was a certain 
plausibility in the idea that the multitude, who live by labor 
in established modes, would be opposed to inventions which 
would inevitably cause industrial revolutions ; but American 
experience completely upsets this notion. For promptness in 
making physical forces and machinery do the work of men, 
the people of the United States surpass incontestably all 
other peoples. The people that invented and introduced with 
perfect commercial success the river steamboat, the cotton- 
gin, the parlor-car and the sleeping-car, the grain elevator, 
the street railway both surface and elevated, the telegraph, 
the telephone, the rapid printing-press, the cheap book and 
newspaper, the sewing-machine, the steam fire-engine, agri- 
cultural machinery, the pipe-lines for natural oil and gas, 
and machine-made clothing, boots, furniture, tools, screws, 
wagons, fire-arms, and watches, — this is not a people to 
vote down or hinder labor-saving invention or beneficent 
industrial revolution. The fact is that in a democracy the 
interests of the greater number will ultimately prevail, as 
they should. It was the stage-drivers and inn-keepers, not 
the multitude, who wished to suppress the locomotive ; it is 
the publishers and the typographical unions, not the mass 
of the people, who wrongly imagine that they have an in- 
terest in making books dearer than they need be. Further- 
more, a just liberty of combination and perfect equality before 
the law, such as prevail in a democracy, enable men or com- 
panies to engage freely in new undertakings at their own risk, 
and bring them to triumphant success, if success be in them, 
whether the multitude approve them or not. The consent 
of the multitude is not necessary to the success of a printing 
press which prints twenty thousand copies of a newspaper 
in an hour, or of a machine-cutter which cuts out twenty over- 
coats at one chop. In short, the notion that democracy will 
hinder religious, political, and social reformation and pro- 
gress, or restrain commercial and industrial improvement, is 
a chimera. 



18 

There is another criticism of the working of democratic 
institutions, more formidable than the last, which the Ameri- 
can democracy is in a fair way to dispose of. It is said that 
democracy is fighting against the best-determined and most 
peremptory of biological laws ; namely, the law of hered- 
ity, with which law the social structure of monarchical and 
oligarchical States is in strict conformity. This criticism fails 
to recognize the distinction between artificial privileges trans- 
missible without regard to inherited virtues or powers, and 
inheritable virtues or powers transmissible without regard 
to hereditary privileges. Artificial privileges will be abol- 
ished by a democracy ; natural, inheritable virtues or pow- 
ers are as surely transmissible under a democracy as under 
any other form of government. Families can be made just 
as enduring in a democratic as in an oligarchic State, if 
family permanence be desired and aimed at. The desire for 
the continuity of vigorous families, and for the reproduc- 
tion of beauty, genius, and nobility of character is universal. 
"From fairest creatures we desire increase" is the commonest 
of sentiments. The American multitude will not take the 
children of distinguished persons on trust ; but it is delighted 
when an able man has an able son, or a lovely mother a love- 
lier daughter. That a democracy does not prescribe the 
close intermarriage which characterizes a strict aristocracy, 
so-called, is physically not a disadvantage, but a great ad- 
vantage for the freer society. The French nobility and the 
English House of Lords furnish good evidence that aristoc- 
racies do not succeed in perpetuating select types of intellect 
or of character. 

In the future there will undoubtedly be seen a great in- 
crease in the number of permanent families in the United 
States, — families in which honor, education, and property 
will be transmitted with reasonable certainty ; and a fair 
beginning has already been made. On the quinquennial cata- 
logue of Harvard University there are about five hundred and 
sixty family stocks, which have been represented by graduates 
at intervals for at least one hundred years. On the Yale cat- 



19 

alogue there are about four hundred and twenty such family 
stocks ; and it is probable that all other American colleges 
which have existed one hundred years or more show similar 
facts in proportion to their age and to the number of their 
graduates. There is nothing in American institutions to 
prevent this natural process from extending and continuing. 
The college graduate who does not send his son to col- 
lege is a curious exception. American colleges are, indeed, 
chiefly recruited from the sons of men who were not college- 
bred themselves ; for democratic society is mobile, and per- 
mits young men of ability to rise easily from the lower to 
the higher levels. But on the other hand nothing in the con- 
stitution of society forces men down who have once risen, or 
prevents their children and grandchildren from staying on 
the higher level if they have the virtue in them. 

The interest in family genealogies has much increased of 
late years, and hundreds of thousands of persons are already 
recorded in printed volumes which have been compiled and 
published by voluntary contributions or by the zeal of individ- 
uals. In the Harvard University Library are four hundred and 
fifteen American family genealogies, three quarters of which 
have been printed since 1860. Many of these families might 
better be called clans or tribes, so numerous is their member- 
ship. Thus of the Northampton Lyman family there were liv- 
ing, when the family genealogy was published in 1872, more 
than four thousand persons. When some American Galton 
desires in the next century to study hereditary genius or 
character under a democracy, he will find ready to his hand 
an enormous mass of material. There are in the United 
States one hundred and forty-eight historical societies, most 
of them recently established, which give a large share of 
their attention to biography, genealogy, necrology, and kin- 
dred topics. Persons and families of local note, the settle- 
ment and development of new towns, and the rise of new 
industries are commemorated by these societies, which are 
accumulating and preserving materials for the philosophical 
historian who shall hereafter describe the social condition 



20 

of a democracy which in a hundred years overran the habit- 
able parts of a continent. 

Two things are necessary to family permanence, — educa- 
tion and bodily vigor, in every generation. To secure these 
two things, the holding and the transmission of moderate 
properties in families must be so well provided for by law and 
custom as to be possible for large numbers of families. For 
the objects in view, great properties are not so desirable as 
moderate or even small properties, since the transmission of 
health and education with great properties is not so sure as 
with small properties. It is worth while to inquire, therefore, 
what has been accomplished under the reign of the American 
democracy in the way of making the holding and the trans- 
mission of small properties possible. In the first place, safe 
investments for moderate sums have been greatly multiplied 
and made accessible, as every trustee knows. Great trust- 
investment companies have been created expressly to hold 
money safely, and make it yield a sure though small in- 
come. The savings-bank and the insurance company have 
been brought to every man's door, the latter insuring against 
almost every kind of disaster to which property and earning 
capacity are liable. Life insurance has been regulated and 
fostered, with the result of increasing materially the stability 
of households and the chances of transmitting education in 
families. Through these and other agencies it has been made 
more probable that widows and orphans will inherit property, 
and easier for them to hold property securely, — a very import- 
ant point in connection with the permanence of families, as 
may be strikingly illustrated by the single statement that 
eighteen per cent of the students in Harvard College have no 
fathers living. Many new employments have been opened to 
women, who have thus been enabled more easily to hold fami- 
lies together and educate their children. Finally, society has 
been saved in great measure from war and revolution, and 
from the fear of these calamities ; and thus family property, 
as well as happiness, has been rendered more secure. 

The holding and the transmission of property in families 



21 

are, however, only means to two ends ; namely, education 
and health in successive generations. From the first, the 
American democracy recognized the fact that education was 
of supreme importance to it, — the elementary education for all, 
the higher for all the naturally selected ; but it awakened much 
later to the necessity of attending to the health of the people. 
European aristocracies have always secured themselves in a 
measure against physical degeneration by keeping a large 
proportion of their men in training as soldiers and sports- 
men, and most of their women at ease in country seats. In 
our democratic society, which at first thought only of work 
and production, it is to be observed that public attention 
is directed more and more to the means of preserving and 
increasing health and vigor. Some of these means are coun- 
try schools for city children, country or seaside houses for 
families, public parks and gardens, out-of-door sports, system- 
atic ,physical training in schools and colleges, vacations for 
business and professional men, and improvements in the 
dwellings and the diet of all classes. Democracy leaves 
marriages and social groups to be determined by natural affilia- 
tion or congeniality of tastes and pursuits, which is the effec- 
tive principle in the association of cultivated persons under 
all forms of government. So far from having any quarrel 
with the law of hereditary transmission, it leaves the principle 
of heredity perfectly free to act ; but it does not add to the 
natural sanctions of that principle an unnecessary bounty of 
privileges conferred by law. 

From this consideration of the supposed conflict between 
democracy and the law of heredity the transition is easy to 
my last topic ; namely, the effect of democratic institutions 
on the production of ladies and gentlemen. There can be no 
question that a general amelioration of manners is brought 
about in a democracy by public schools, democratic churches, 
public conveyances without distinction of class, universal suf- 
frage, town-meetings, and all the multifarious associations in 
which democratic society delights ; but this general ameliora- 



22 

tion might exist, and yet the highest types of manners might 
fail. Do these fail ? On this important point American 
experience is already interesting, and I think conclusive. 
Forty years ago Emerson said it was a chief felicity of our 
country that it excelled in women. It excels more and more. 
Who has not seen in public and in private life American 
women unsurpassable in grace and graciousness, in serenity 
and dignity, in effluent gladness and abounding courtesy ? 
Now, the lady is the consummate fruit of human society at its 
best. In all the higher walks of American life there are men 
whose bearing and aspect at once distinguish them as gentle- 
men. They have personal force, magnanimity, moderation, 
and refinement ; they are quick to see and to sympathize ; 
they are pure, brave, and firm. These are also the qualities 
that command success; and herein lies the only natural con- 
nection between the possession of property and nobility of 
character. In a mobile or free society the excellent or noble 
man is likely to win ease and independence ; but it does not 
follow that under any form of government' the man of many 
possessions is necessarily excellent. On the evidence of my 
reading and of my personal observation at home and abroad, 
I fully believe that there is a larger proportion of ladies and 
gentlemen in the United States than in any other country. 
This proposition is, I think, true with the highest definition 
of the term " lady " or " gentleman ; " but it is also true, if 
ladies and gentlemen are only persons who are clean and 
well-dressed, who speak gently and eat with their forks. It 
is unnecessary, however, to claim any superiority for de- 
mocracy in this respect; enough that the highest types of 
manners in men and women are produced abundantly on 
democratic soil. 

It would appear then from American experience that neither 
generations of privileged ancestors, nor large inherited posses- 
sions, are necessary to the making of a lady or a gentleman. 
What is necessary ? In the first place, natural gifts. The 
gentleman is horn in a democracy, no less than in a monarchy. 
In other words, he is a person of fine bodily and spiritual 



23 

qualities, mostly innate. Secondly, he must have through 
elementary education early access to books, and therefore 
to great thoughts and high examples. Thirdly, he must be 
early brought into contact with some refined and noble per- 
son, — father, mother, teacher, pastor, employer, or friend. 
These are the only necessary conditions in peaceful times and 
in law-abiding communities like ours. Accordingly, such 
facts as the following are common in the United States : 
One of the numerous children of a small farmer manages 
to fit himself for college, works his way through college, 
becomes a lawyer, at forty is a much-trusted man in one 
of the chief cities of the Union, and is distinguished for 
the courtesy and dignity of his bearing and speech. The 
son of a country blacksmith is taught and helped to a small 
college by his minister ; he himself becomes a minister, 
has a long fight with poverty and ill-health, but at forty-five 
holds as high a place as his profession affords, and every line 
in his face and every tone in his voice betoken the gentleman. 
The sons and daughters of a successful shopkeeper take the 
highest places in the most cultivated society of their native 
place, and well deserve the pre-eminence accorded to them. 
The daughter of a man of very imperfect education, who 
began life with nothing and became a rich merchant, is 
singularly beautiful from youth to age, and possesses to the 
highest degree the charm of dignified and gracious manners. 
A young girl, not long out of school, the child of respectable 
but obscure parents, marries a public man, and in conspicuous 
station bears herself with a grace, discretion, and nobleness 
which she could not have exceeded had her blood been royal 
for seven generations. Striking cases of this kind will oc- 
cur to every person in this assembly. They are every-day 
phenomena in American society. What conclusion do they 
establish ? They prove that the social mobility of a democ- 
racy, which permits the excellent and well-endowed of either 
sex to rise and to seek out each other, and which gives every 
advantageous variation or sport in a family stock free oppor- 
tunity to develop, is immeasurably more beneficial to a na- 



24 

tion than any selective in-breeding, founded on class distinc- 
tions, which has ever been devised. Since democracy has 
every advantage for producing in due season and proportion 
the best human types, it is reasonable to expect that science 
and literature, music and art, and all the finer graces of 
society will develop and thrive in America, as soon as the 
more urgent tasks of subduing a wilderness and organizing 
society upon an untried plan are fairly accomplished. 

Such are some of the reasons drawn from experience for 
believing that our ship of state is stout and sound ; but she 

sails — 

"... the sea 
Of storm-engendering liberty," 

the happiness of the greatest number her destined haven. Her 
safety requires incessant watchfulness and readiness. With- 
out trusty eyes on the look-out, and a prompt hand at the 
wheel, the stoutest ship may be dismantled by a passing 
squall. It is only intelligence and discipline which carry 
the ship to its port. 



l,s^ 



